University Watch-Dog Publishes List Of Anti-Israel Middle East Studies Professors

"How can professors who are so biased against the Jewish state accurately or fairly teach students about Israel or the Arab-Israel conflict?”

AMCHA, an organization trying to fight anti-Semitism at college campuses has published a list of 218 professors identifying themselves as Middle East scholars who recently called for the academic boycott of Israel. AMCHA offered the list as a service to students who might want to avoid those biased professors.

"How can professors who are so biased against the Jewish state accurately or fairly teach students about Israel or the Arab-Israel conflict?” asked Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, AMCHA Initiative co-founder and faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Students who wish to become better educated without subjecting themselves to anti-Israel bias, or possibly even antisemitic rhetoric, may want to check which faculty members from their university are signatories before registering."

The professors on the list signed a petition identifying themselves as "Middle East scholars" and calling on their colleagues in Middle East Studies "to boycott Israeli academic institutions," and pledging "not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel.”

"It's bad enough that these professors have revealed themselves to be wildly biased against one, and only one, Middle Eastern country. Even more troubling, however, is the fact that many of these patently biased boycotters of Israel are affiliated with government-designated, taxpayer-funded National Resource Centers (NRC) on their campuses,” stated Leila Beckwith, AMCHA Initiative cofounder and UCLA emeritus professor. “Clearly NRC-affiliated faculty who have publicly vilified Israel and committed themselves to refusing ‘to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli institutions’ have violated both the letter and spirit of the federal law which funds their teaching and research.”

Sixteen of the twenty universities receiving federal funding to support Middle East Studies during the 2010 - 2014 NRC grant cycle employ faculty who have displayed their anti-Israel bias by signing the petition to boycott Israeli universities and scholars. These universities include Columbia University, Duke University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Harvard University, New York University, Princeton University, University of California Berkeley, University of California Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington Seattle, and Yale University.

The full list of professors and their universities follows:

Note: Universities marked with an asterisk (*) receive federal funding to support programs in Middle East or Near East studies

University of California, San Diego
Michael Provence, Associate Professor of History

University of California, San Francisco
Claudia Chaufan, Associate Professor, Health Policy and Sociology

University of California, Santa Barbara
Nancy Gallagher, Research Professor, Department of History
Adam Sabra, Professor of History and King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies
Sherene Seikaly, Assistant Professor, History

* University of Chicago
Fred M. Donner, Professor of Near Eastern History, Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
Lisa Wedeen, Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science and the College

University of Colorado, Boulder
John Willis, Associate Professor
University of Connecticut
James C. Faris, Professor Emeritus, Anthropology; Director Emeritus, Program in Middle East Languages and Area Studies
University of Dayton
Ellen Fleischmann, Professor, Department of History

University of Delaware
Muqtedar Khan, Associate Professor

University of Hartford
Robert Lang, Professor of Cinema
University of Hawai’i at Manoa
Ibrahim Aoude, Professor
Farideh Farhi, Lecturer and Affiliate Graduate Faculty of Political Science

Wayne State University
Barbara Aswad, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, and Past President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America
May Seikaly, Associate Professor of Modern Middle East History